OUR OPINION: A criminal abuse of power

Wednesday

It shouldn’t have to take a legislative act to warn teachers they cannot use their positions to engage students, even if they are over the age of consent, in a sexual relationship.

It shouldn’t have to take a legislative act to warn teachers they cannot use their positions to engage students, even if they are over the age of consent, in a sexual relationship.

But apparently it does. The Legislature held a hearing Tuesday on a bill that would criminalize sexual relations between teachers and students younger than 18.

The bill is a no-brainer in as far as it goes and anyone who scoffs at the notion that teens old enough to say yes can’t be coerced or scarred ought to learn from the driving force behind the measure, former Quincy High School student Carol Adler.

Adler, now 49 and a married mother of three, was a 16-year-old student when a married English teacher seduced her in her junior year, a period after her father had died and she was seeking emotional security.

The sexual relationship – calling it an affair negates the exploitive nature of the teacher’s offense – lasted two years but its impact hung over Adler’s life well into adulthood.

Although she told her husband about the relationship, it wasn’t until nearly 30 years later that she went to Quincy school officials, who launched an investigation. The teacher resigned and gave up his teaching license amid a probe into the improper relationship with a student, but it never should have taken that long.

Under the bill, sponsored by Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, any teacher or employee of a public or private school would face 21/2 years in jail and a fine of $10,000 if they are convicted of having sexual intercourse with a student under 18 in the school where they work.

It’s a start but nowhere near what is needed to protect those students who are often at their most vulnerable when they are pressured into a sexual relationship by a predator masquerading as a mentor.

If it sounds familiar, one only has to go back to the clergy sex abuse scandal and see many of the young victims had emotional upheaval in their lives and the priests who were supposed to be the shepherds became wolves.

The bill should be expanded to include anyone in a position of authority – coaches, counselors, administrators – who has contact on a regular basis with a teen. The measure should also cover any type of sexual contact, not just intercourse.

Like a sexual harassment situation at a workplace, a teacher-student sexual relationship is about power, all held by the older person in authority. There is nothing remotely consensual about it in the mind of the victim.

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